Author
Topic: Shimpaku that needs... (Read 8828 times)

Its color, while improving, isn't the deep lush green of many other shimpaku I've seen. Its in very fine organic soil, that until quite recently had a layer of thick moss growing on it along with most of the trunk.

Still, what's the wisdom of the group? I have an idea of where to start, but I haven't worked out all the details past steps 1 or 2. Would it be ok to go ahead and style this tree or do I wait until I see whips of foliage? ...Or do I have to repot it before I can style it (or expect to see whips of foliage)?

If you can unburden yourself with the shackles of reality and imagine for a minute that this tree was healthy, what would your instinct be?

And again, sorry for the pictures. Pretend like that blob isn't there ...and that I don't have anything to hide by putting it there.

If this was in my garden, I'd most likely feed it heavily and keep it in lots of sun for the rest of the year. If an area starts to send runners out 3-4", I might trim that shoot back pretty far with the hope of causing some back-budding.

Looking at the photos, it has 2 long straight branches and one trunk line with good movement.

Next spring, I'd either repot and let it grow; or if the soil is ok Jin those 2 long straight branches, and prune back what's left pretty hard to get some back budding (shown in photo). Maybe by the following spring, it will have built enough density to start some basic styling.

If you are serious about making a bonsai out of this tree according to the assumptions you asked us to take at the beginning concerning the tree's health I would resign myself to the fact that two thing exist in real life: Juniper bonsai exist, mostly, in the bonsai world as representing survivors of centuries on the mountain side. This means that there has to be a lot of twisted portions of the tree and a lot of dead wood. There is not a lot that you have with this tree in the area of portions that can become dead wood but you do have a part of the tree that you can drastically bend and twist around to bring it in closer to the base of the trunk. This probably means raffia binding, guy wires, jacks and a lot of basic wiring for shape.

Once this sets and the raffia has been removed you will probably find places where the tree has split. These areas can be the starting point of creating dead wood elements along the newly twisted trunk. If there are no splits you can always start to create one that bare strips up the trunk. These elements tend to make the trunk larger as the tree attempts to roll over the wounds you inflict. This is just my opinion and what I would do faced with having to do something with this tree.

I would also understand that this will take more than a couple of years. But so will growing in the ground with no artistic direction and in the end you have only a healthy tree (not bad either) with the same design problems.